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S5E03: On Administrative Law and Being the First Openly Transgender NJ Cabinet Member, with Allison Chris Myers RLAW'99
19 Plays1 year ago
Dean Johanna Bond is joined by Allison Chris Myers RLAW'99, Chair and CEO of the New Jersey Civil Service Commission. She shares the story of her journey through law school, some of her favorite classes, and on her experience as the first openly transgender New Jersey Cabinet member.
The Power of Attorney is produced by Rutgers Law School. With two locations minutes from Philadelphia and New York City, Rutgers Law offers the prestige and reputation of a large, nationally known university combined with a personal, small campus experience. Learn more by visiting law.rutgers.edu.
Production Manager: Shanida Carter
Series Producer & Editor: Nate Nakao
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rutgerslaw/messageRecommended
Transcript
Introduction of Alison Chris Myers
00:00:10
Speaker
Hi, this is Joanna Bond. I'm the Dean of Rutgers Law School, and you're listening to the Power of Attorney podcast. It's my great pleasure to introduce you today to Chair and CEO of New Jersey Civil Service Commission and 1999 Rutgers Law School graduate, Alison Chris Myers, who is also the first openly transgender state cabinet member. Thank you so much for being with us today.
00:00:39
Speaker
Thank you for asking me to join your show. I'm very honored. Thank you. Well, it's our pleasure. It's such an honor to have you here.
Myers' Early Background
00:00:48
Speaker
And one of the things that we usually start out with on these podcast episodes is a question that asks you about your origin story. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure, sure. I grew up in Cumberland County in a town called Bridgeston in South Jersey.
00:01:07
Speaker
And I, I continue to live in the county and work here. I, uh, grow up in the early seventies. And when I finished high school, I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself. I was working in a factory, one of the glass factories over in Millville, um, you know, doing laborer work. And then on the weekends I was loading trucks.
00:01:34
Speaker
And I didn't have really a lot of money or anything to go to school.
Joining the Navy and Legal Aspirations
00:01:40
Speaker
So I wanted to try to transition basically to to learn a profession of some sort. So I enlisted in the Navy. I usually kid that I liked I wanted to find a job where I could work in an office because
00:01:58
Speaker
I would see the Foreman's office on the factory floor in the middle of the graveyard shift over a Millville door in the middle of the summer and a sweltering heat. And that was someplace you could go in there and you'd see the people.
00:02:16
Speaker
working in air conditioning, looking comfortable, and you weren't like getting off of that leer. You know, you couldn't just like leave the, let the, or the wear would fall off in the ground. I was like, it would be great to work in an office. Right, right. Oh yeah, absolutely. That the availability of air conditioning alone is pretty attractive.
00:02:35
Speaker
Oh, it was huge. But it was a way to learn a skill as well as to, for me, save some money for college. I come from a family of folks that all my brothers and sisters and my father
00:02:57
Speaker
were served in one of the branches of the military for at least one term. So, you know, we were very public spirited that way. So I wanted to continue that tradition as well, quite frankly, all kidding aside. So I enlisted and I became what was called a personnelman in the Navy. And that's the individual that works with
00:03:22
Speaker
the personnel function for whatever kind of command that you're with, all the enlisted service records and transfers and orders and leave management and all these kinds of human resourcey kinds of things.
00:03:35
Speaker
So I was trained to do military personnel in Meridian, Mississippi. And when I was finished my training in Mississippi, I was stationed with an F-14 squadron at then-NAS Miramar in San Diego. Now, you got to remember, it was 1986.
00:03:58
Speaker
when I went. And right as I was reporting to that base to my command, they had finished filming the movie Top Gun, the first Top Gun at that base. I was thinking that the timing would match up with the first Top Gun. Yeah. And the actual Top Gun school, Navy Fighter Weapons School, was three hangers down from the
00:04:20
Speaker
the squadron that I was assigned to. So that was kind of fun and a big deal at the time. It must have been exciting. Oh, it was. It was a blast. And it was a really good experience for me. And it helped me gather and gain a lot of the maturity. I think a person needs to attend college, actually. I don't know if I would have done well in college.
00:04:47
Speaker
without that type of discipline and structure that the military gives you. So I saved every penny I could because my actual dream was to go to Rutgers College in New Brunswick is what I wanted to do. And what I wanted to do was, I know I wanted to work in, we call it human resources now, but back then it was personnel.
00:05:13
Speaker
And I thought, well, if I could work in some type of administrative personnel type of position and then go and learn and get a college degree, I should be able to get
Education and Career Path
00:05:27
Speaker
a nice position and start my career in the personnel field. So I was very fortunate in the military. And this is really where I started an interest or found an interest in the legal aspects of
00:05:42
Speaker
of the employment situation. And one of the things that I eventually was assigned to do was to prepare
00:05:52
Speaker
the cases for Article 15 matters that went before the CEO regarding disciplinary matters and discharges for misconduct and things like that. I mean, I certainly didn't do the hearing or was the officer or anything that did those, but what I did was I did the research and put the packages together so they could make their determinations. Not quite a legal brief, but close enough to whet my interest in
00:06:22
Speaker
the possibility of someday considering law school. So when I got out of the service, I came back home to Cumberland County and attended what's now called Rowan College of South Jersey, but back then it was Cumberland County College. I
00:06:42
Speaker
I got out of the military in December and I started in January and finished the course in a year because I went all summer and took a full, back then you could take a full course load of up to 21 credits for the same amount of money. Wow, that's incredible. So I took, you know, and I was able to get through my associates program there by December.
00:07:07
Speaker
and I transferred to Rutgers College on a cold January day, actually, is what it was. My girlfriend, who's now been my wife for 30 years, I can remember her bringing me and dropping me off up there to the housing where I stayed for the first term.
00:07:30
Speaker
And I'm sorry, did you continue to study in the H.R. kind of space? What I did was I studied it was a field called labor studies. And what that was a study of was the study of the American labor movement.
00:07:49
Speaker
including things like collective negotiations, a risk of law, some basic contract law, OSHA, those types of worker rights types of matter. You know, we learned about the Public Employee Relations Commission, those types of things and did those kinds of mock cases. So I thought it was like a really
00:08:12
Speaker
great approach because at the county college I had earned an associate's in business administration. So I thought this way it was a nice balance between kind of management and labor by pursuing my course of study this way. So I graduated and started looking for a job and I couldn't find a job.
00:08:37
Speaker
Is that why you decided to go to law school at that point? No, law school came later for me. Okay. So, and I was, I was really disappointed. I remember because I thought, wow, you know, I had some practical experience, kind of work. I mean, I know it's not private sector, human resources, but it was something I thought I could get a start in with a bachelor, because I never even thought at one point I would be able to go to college.
00:09:03
Speaker
And it was nice having those. And I thought, wow, this is like the ultimate package. So I'm looking and looking and I can't find anything. And I finished school in
00:09:16
Speaker
the summer actually, because with the wet work, I had to take half of the summer session to get the credits that I needed to get done earlier, because I only stayed at Rutgers for... It ended up being like a year and a half is what I needed to do there. Okay.
00:09:38
Speaker
beginning of the summer in June, I started looking for nothing. So by the time I finished the first, yeah, I think it was, I had to do the first summer session at the time. I had no prospects. Oh, that's so discouraging. Oh, it was very discouraging. I was like, what am I going to do? Well, you got to work. Right. So I started applying for other types of positions and I got a position with
00:10:04
Speaker
a medical healthcare utilization review company,
Balancing Work and Law School
00:10:09
Speaker
which are the folks that do like pre-certification when you call in for a hospital stay or a procedure. But the other side of the business was written record reviews for medical insurance carriers to
00:10:25
Speaker
adjudicate cases where they want to challenge the claim, the claimants for medical necessity or if it's causally related, if it's a worker's comp claim or pre-existing decisions and stuff like that. And I was actually hired in the marketing department. And not to sell the stuff, they need a marketing clerk. And that's what I started as.
00:10:50
Speaker
And I thought, okay, it was great. I'm not loading trucks, so that's a wonderful thing. And you were probably in an air conditioned office. And I was in an air conditioned office. So it's funny, about six months into my job there, I got friendly with the lady that hired me. And I asked her, I said, why did you pick me to do this job?
00:11:17
Speaker
I mean, was it because of my college degree and military service and all that? And Maggie turned around and looked at me and said, the most attractive thing about you as a candidate was you knew how to type.
00:11:35
Speaker
I'm sure that's not the answer you were looking for. And I was like, I learned, I learned how to type in high school and ninth grade. Right. I didn't spend all those years in college on that. You know, so, but it was, it was a good experience for me there. I ended up being there for about 10 years actually. And I'd moved my way up. Oh, that's great. And during
00:11:57
Speaker
my last four years there, I was kind of getting itchy to do something because it was kind of a litigation based business. At least we provided like expert reports in the areas where I had worked. Right.
00:12:13
Speaker
And we were just a clearinghouse. We arranged with medical providers to get the specialties that they needed for the different challenges and stuff. Not really legal work in itself, but kind of still on the peripheral. And I still always had this, I really always wanted to work in personnel. So I could see just as in working in businesses and being an employer, moving up to the system, how much the law
00:12:39
Speaker
interacts in the employment relationship. Oh, absolutely. Kind of like in real time. Right. So I thought, OK, this would be maybe now's the time to explore going to law school. And was this early 90s, mid 90s? Yeah, it was the mid 90s. Yes. So I applied to Rutgers Law School and did the night program in Camden. And I was accepted. Great.
00:13:07
Speaker
And I went through the four-year night school program after work. And you continued at that same company? Okay. Yeah. The place where I had worked, it was actually in Mount Laurel, then it moved, right? Which was wonderful. It moved to Pensalken off of 130. Okay. And my wife and I only had one car at the time.
00:13:31
Speaker
So it helped that you were close by. Right. I mean, we lived down here though, right? So we would, you know, she lived, she worked in Mount Laurel and I worked in Pensauk and so she would drop me off or whatever. But when I started school, we really couldn't do that anymore because I had to go to school after work. So there was happened to be a bus line that ran from the old medic building, which is where I had worked off of 130,
00:13:58
Speaker
all the way down to Camden and I got off two blocks over from the school. And, you know, so I was able to make like the first class and usually there was, you know, two classes that you would do like three hour sessions. And did you take the bus back home after classes? Yes, I did. I took the bus home, the 408 down to Millville.
00:14:24
Speaker
And it was, and what was, what was the, kind of the challenging part was my last class got done, I don't know, like at nine 30 or something. And it was late. Right. And I had to run the two blocks over to get the 406 and it was the last one coming to Millville for the night.
00:14:47
Speaker
And it was standing around after class to ask questions of the professor. No, like I had to run over because it was I don't know. I don't remember the exact times, but it was like 10 minutes after class left. I had to be over there. Right.
00:15:00
Speaker
And I run over there and I was able to take the bus home and it took about an hour to get the bus down to where I live because it goes all over the place when it's picking and dropping people off and stuff. But I found that it was good time to kind of decompress and I could start some of my reading assignments because as you know, there is a ton of reading in law school.
00:15:27
Speaker
So eventually we had moved, Lori and I bought, Lori's my wife, we had bought a house and I ended up starting to take the bus to work from down here because it was more effective because that way I could get my study time in on the commute up. So I'd take the bus to Camden, then just get the 409 to, which actually ends up in Trenton, but it goes up 130 and I could get off.
00:15:57
Speaker
go to work, but I had all that time to be able, that's really when I did most of my reading and outlining for your listeners. That's fantastic. What was on the bus and on weekends and what was really cool, at least during my first year, and I don't know if you do this now, but for legal research and writing, it was the first time
00:16:21
Speaker
that the Camden campus at least explored doing this was they they had a Saturday class for that instead of it was an option the one else could have eaten the night one else could either taken this section at night that meant like twice a week or whatever or this day one on Saturday mornings for one time a week so I ended up doing doing that for the for the for the legal research and writing but it made for a lot of
00:16:52
Speaker
a lot of good times. I'm sure, I'm sure. Well, let me ask you a question about your Rutgers Law School experience. What was it about Rutgers Law School that drew you to Rutgers specifically?
00:17:06
Speaker
I love Rutgers, period. That's all I ever thought about was going to Rutgers College when I left actually for the military. That's where I wanted to go. And I looked at it as the crowning achievement for a young then boy.
00:17:24
Speaker
and down Jersey to be able to make it. I mean, going to Rutgers, at least in my mind, it was like you're going to the big city and you're close to so many things and so much opportunity. And there was so much to learn there and the experience was just so wonderful.
00:17:42
Speaker
So I've always loved Rucker's period. And specifically for law school, a huge draw was the programming at the time. What I particularly liked about Rucker's law school in Camden, it was not only the facility and the proximity
00:18:02
Speaker
for my life outside of school where I could work and get there easily. But it was really more for the programming. They had the four year night school program with, I think it was one summer you had to go if I remember correctly. And one of the required courses for all the one else was tax law.
00:18:23
Speaker
Not that I got into a lot of it, but I thought there was a good consciousness of a sound firm legal education with the basics to jump off of any other area of law. And for some reason that just always stuck with me as being like a huge deal. Because at the time, and I don't know if the law schools do it now, but
00:18:47
Speaker
It was the only program that I knew of that required that particular course of all the 1Ls. It's interesting to me that you got in the weeds enough in your research to discover that that was a unique part of the Rutgers curriculum. Yes. And they even had, I mean, I didn't participate in it because I didn't have an interest to go that way, but there was like a tax honors program at the time I remember. Interesting.
00:19:14
Speaker
So I thought it would provide a wonderful base like I said, but as well as like a springboard really to be able to serve the citizens of New Jersey because I love living in New Jersey and I particularly love where I live down here in down Jersey.
00:19:37
Speaker
And Rutgers is really like part of who we are as residents of New Jersey. Right. Absolutely. So there was kind of just this emotional attachment to it, just like I said, generally. But for the law program, it was really for the foundation.
00:19:57
Speaker
the foundational courses and that was like the biggest thing. And the support structure at the school was wonderful, I recall, particularly for the night school students. I don't know what it was like to be there during the day, but we always had access to all of our professors.
00:20:18
Speaker
And they were always very reachable.
Law School Experience at Rutgers
00:20:23
Speaker
It wasn't like the paper chase. That's good. That's good. Well, I'm so glad to hear that professors were accessible and that the school was conscious of providing support services for evening students. We still do that. We're very, very conscientious about that and really make an effort to ensure that evening students are included as well.
00:20:48
Speaker
And, you know, some of the instructors that we had were, I mean, there really were known quantities, actually. And even at the time, for evidence, I had Jack Sabatino, who's on the appellate bench now. Oh, great. You know, was just amazing. Yeah. Judge King with appellate practices. Well, I mean, I'm going to shift gears for us. And let's do a softball round, Robin. OK. So so what was your
00:21:17
Speaker
Favorite and least favorite class in law school. I'm going to guess favorite was administrative law, but maybe I'm wrong. Yes, it was. I loved, I loved administrative law. And the second closest one to that was New Jersey constitutional law. Oh, fantastic. That's great. Okay. And least favorite torts and criminal procedure.
00:21:39
Speaker
Right. Just just not an interest for you. No. And the thing is, it's like, you know, after going through civil procedure as a one ounce stuff, which is challenging. It really is. I thought, OK, well, you know, criminal procedure will be a little more relatable or something, you know.
00:21:59
Speaker
I'd rather take 10 classes in civil procedure than ever doing another criminal because I just couldn't seem to grasp or have an interest in it the same way. It wasn't like it was a bad instructor or anything like that. The gentleman was wonderful. I really just did not care for the subject matter when I got into the class.
00:22:22
Speaker
Right, understandable. Well, and I think that's one of the great things about law school is you really do, over time, figure out what it is about the law that excites you and resonates with you. And so, you know, you figure that out by taking classes that you either love or don't love. Right, right. And it was interesting, too, because like, you know, I remember thinking at one point, because whenever I took administrative law, it was a little
00:22:50
Speaker
closer to the end of what would have been my second year if I was a traditional day student. And prior to that, I had other, you know, like I was in a
00:23:03
Speaker
I can't remember what they called it at the time, but it was basically like ERISA at the course. And after I took the admin law class, I'm thinking, I wish I had the admin law first, because I think I would have understood agency operations and interpretation a little better if I had that earlier on in my law school career. You know what I mean? Because it would have helped me with other
00:23:26
Speaker
kind of like agency-specific courses that I had that dealt with an agency interpreting and enforcing a particular statute. Great. And just for the sake of our listeners who may not be familiar with it, can you just mention briefly what ERISA is? It's the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. Okay, great. Thank you. And it covers
00:23:56
Speaker
basically your pension programs, the rules that pension programs need to apply, uh, go by. Okay. The interest was, you know, because that's employment type of benefit and it's right up your alley. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was, it was really wonderful. All right. So going back to our softball round, Robin favorite place to eat nearby campus.
00:24:23
Speaker
Okay, well, do you know the Camden campus? Yes. Okay, so remember, I was in there in the evening, so not a lot of places to eat in Camden at the evening during that time. There've been a lot of building and stuff since then, I know. So there was an old brownstone. It was rather close to the law school, but
00:24:50
Speaker
You know, it was a short walk. It was an old brownstone. And that was the law school student center. Oh, it was an official student center. And nobody ever went to it.
00:25:04
Speaker
And you had to push these buttons to get in the back door. They gave you like the security code. And it was actually there because I would bring my dinner with me and eat in there and
Public Service Career
00:25:15
Speaker
study in there before class. Or if we had study groups that would get together
00:25:20
Speaker
on the weekends we would use some of the rooms in the in the in the law school student center and you know i don't know if it was used a lot during the day or not but it was never nobody was ever in there and those couches and stuff and i took a few naps there between
00:25:36
Speaker
you know after work but before class and stuff but that was probably my favorite place to eat because I was able to read and quiet and we'd be and when we'd get together and go through outlines and stuff you know on a Saturday or have a study group or whatever you know there's a lot of fond memories because we
00:25:57
Speaker
You know, of course there's like always food associated with stuff like that. Of course, of course. Absolutely. Well, those things don't change. That's still true. Right. So, you know, and that was kind of like closest to the, you know, college experience or whatever.
00:26:12
Speaker
Right. So it was a lot of fond memories with with that particular building, actually. That's great. That's great. OK, so what what do you think was the most important thing that you learned at Rutgers Law School? Tenacity. Fantastic. You expand on that a little bit. A problem I really learned that a problem doesn't always have one answer or one point of view.
00:26:39
Speaker
or a different way to even consider or how to, or not necessarily unearth all of the facts because I would have preconceived notions about things. And the whole process of being challenged with the Socratic method and working with a bunch of people that are gonna be in words, it was really mind expanding. And you really had to be tenacious or learn to be tenacious to deal with this and accept the fact that, hey, wait a minute.
00:27:09
Speaker
I'm not really wrong about this. This is a learning experience because this is what I didn't consider. And this would be beneficial to keep this in mind and dealing with your clients, actually. So just that kind of overall process. And it's hard to go through, at least for me it was at first, because it's like, oh, you think you do well basically in college and in work or whatever.
00:27:37
Speaker
You know, you're always right. You think you have all the answers, right? You think you have all the answers and you really don't. And once I stepped away from my ego being hurt, it was very mind opening and it's benefited me greatly.
00:27:56
Speaker
So it was really like the tenacity to go through a bunch of different cases or cases from competing circuits that were differing, you know, and you could see how how the judge got there in each of the case. But, you know, someone's got to be. So that particular exercise was ultimately the best one for me. It helped me the most in my personal life and as well as in in my legal education.
00:28:24
Speaker
I can see how it would. That's a fantastic quality. And were there ways in which your legal education really helped prepare you for your career in government? Yes, it did. I was still working at HealthQuest when I graduated from law school. And I kind of figured out that I wanted to work in public service at that point. And basically, it was because of
00:28:53
Speaker
my law school experience. I started thinking of public service after undergraduate, like working with the National Labor Relations Board or something like that. And it didn't really quite work out that way for me. But I started looking for government service jobs dealing with, and
00:29:17
Speaker
human resources now and how this kind of education would be beneficial. So back in 1999, I was looking through a young internet job posting page for the former Department of New Jersey Department of Personnel thinking, you know, maybe there's different state jobs in employee relations or
00:29:43
Speaker
Right. A human resource generalist, whatever, you know, because I never really wanted to argue like in front of a judge or anything like that, you know. Right. So I find this position for personal labor analyst training and it's just like, oh, you know, we adjudicate cases on the written record and blah, blah, blah. Nausea needs like a law degree. So I applied for it.
00:30:10
Speaker
So about a year later, I hear back from him, Oh, you know, here's this, we're having this test up in Trenton. So go and take the test. You know, at this point, it's just like a year into the process. You know, I'm kind of thinking, you know, nothing's going to happen. So I get a call for an interview, right? And it was November of that year and I go up, they interviewed and they offered me a trainee position in December.
00:30:41
Speaker
And I started the trainee position in the beginning of January of 2001. So to go back to answer your question, okay. So I'm in the interview and it was like most public service positions, it's a panel interview with different folks kind of assessing your answers against weighted questions. And when it's done, do you have any questions?
00:31:11
Speaker
And basically what the division ended up being hired for, we provided counsel and advice to the then merit system board of cases brought before it. So we would do the legal research and brief writing.
00:31:31
Speaker
for the Merit System Board to make a final administrative determination on a matter under its jurisdiction. So I asked them, we have this thing in law school called Westlaw. Do you have anything like that that you use for civil, well, Department of Merit System Board cases at the time?
00:31:54
Speaker
Right. I'll never forget this. The guy that was interviewing me, it became like a wonderful mentor. He looks at me and says, he points his finger like two people down. He said, we just asked that guy because he has like a
00:32:13
Speaker
a memory like, and you could ask this guy like, how was it? Well, the merit system board reviewed this issue like in 1969 and he would just had this memory and he could give you like a site and then you'd just have to go look for the case like in the files to see if you. He was like a human Westlaw. Right. He was like a human Westlaw, but you know, like you always need like the actual document. Right.
00:32:42
Speaker
I was like, oh, okay. And I'm thinking, oh my goodness, how did he do anything? One of the things that when I started the position, and that's the way it was actually, you went to Peter for everything to do this, if the regs or whatever couldn't help you.
00:33:06
Speaker
And after a number of years of doing that, I started to develop a kind of like a Westlaw database of quote unquote, presidential merit system board actions and began to put it together.
00:33:25
Speaker
And my, and I was just doing this for my own. It was like a big course outline for law school. And I had different topic areas, you know, different taxonomy for it and everything. So my manager asked me one day like, well, how did you, she asked me a question about like leaves of absence. Right. And I said, Oh, well, you know,
00:33:46
Speaker
You know, in Ray Fox, which was decided in 1988, you have to take a leave of absence from, you know, your permanent career service position to maintain a relationship with the career service. So if you get dismissed from your unclassified appointment, you can still fall back on your career service appointment. And Elizabeth looked at me like, you didn't work here in 1988. How the heck do you know that?
00:34:11
Speaker
So I told her about this thing that I had. You created a system. I created this system. And she encouraged me to share it with the division. And from that grew, we call it like the index, but we were able to centralize the system. And this is all before the time we started sending
00:34:34
Speaker
Uh, like our, our little final administrative decisions to, uh, Lexus Nexus now, cause they sort of do it at this point, but they never used to do this. That didn't exist. Right. At least, you know, at, at, at agency level stuff, you know, there was like a digest, an old paper digest for, uh, OAL stuff. There was a reporter for a while, a paper reporter for a while. And they stopped that, um, in the nineties, I think.
00:35:02
Speaker
That's amazing. Times have changed. Yes, but that was like the big thing and it was something, you know, the taxonomy and the coding, a lot of it I lifted from the key system because, you know, it's like an area of practice that we have, you know, examinations, eligibility, announcements, different disciplinary issues.
00:35:24
Speaker
Right. I mean, you know, it goes on and on and there's different nuances. I mean, it's not a huge body of law, but it is one that we need. And all of our analysts now just kind of use it like second nature. But I learned that from law school and the importance of being able to research and find information. Right.
00:35:48
Speaker
That was like another big takeaway from law school is finding information, getting the facts straight and then finding the law. Right. And it helped finding the quote unquote law, you know, because like in the administrative for something so policy driven as a lot of what civil service is, it's maybe there's more of an emphasis on this area or priority from one administration than another. So, but either.
00:36:18
Speaker
kind of course is correct, but it's a matter of how you want to weigh things as a policy matter. So it served me well having such a tool because I would catalog and keep all of this information of how, I don't know, this was kind of like the practice in these areas that they wanted us to defend during the Christie administration.
00:36:45
Speaker
And this is kind of the same area during the Corzine administration. And when the new decision makers would come in, we would have it and say, okay, this is kind of the history of what was done in the past, full panoply, which is another word I learned in law school, panoply. That's a good one.
00:37:05
Speaker
This way, the decision makers would kind of have a complete history of what to do so they could make the best decision for whatever was before them in that topic area, so they would know all of the thinking on it. Because I truly believe in the civil service system as being independent of the political process as much as possible. Speaking of the civil service profession, can you tell us a little bit about
00:37:34
Speaker
your current role as chair and CEO of New Jersey Civil Service Commission?
Role at Civil Service Commission
00:37:40
Speaker
Sure. What the chairperson and the CEO of the Commission is, it's a cabinet-level position that
00:37:50
Speaker
administers the overall selection process and adjudicatory process of employees of jurisdictions under the civil service system. So in a nutshell, what the agency does, the Civil Service Commission, which was formerly the Department of Personnel, they changed it back in 2008 to Civil Service Commission,
00:38:17
Speaker
is to classify different types of positions for jobs. And then what do those jobs do? What are the duties they do kind of generally? And what are the knowledge, skills, and abilities that would take to successfully perform those jobs? So we create, we created a, or we, you know, the agency creates a classification system. So different types of government work,
00:38:46
Speaker
They're classified into positions by what we call titles. And then there's different title series where you can incrementally move up to different areas or levels of responsibility within that title system. And civil service basically starts with that.
00:39:06
Speaker
because our constitution, which is unique among the states, actually mandates testing if practical for civil service appointments in the state. Okay. Okay. So you can't write a test if you don't know what you're writing a test about. So that's why you have to classify the positions because you need to know how to build a test, but it's more than just how to build a test to fairly compete
00:39:36
Speaker
How do you compensate incumbents in that title based on the levels of knowledge, skills, and abilities, responsibilities, accountability, what you're bringing to the job, what the job requires?
00:39:50
Speaker
So you can't test and you can't really compensate without that. So what else does civil service do? Okay. Well, our, our enabling statute says we're supposed to reward performance based on meritorious performance and separate employees from service if they, on the basis of their performance, because this advances the overall public policy of the state to deliver
00:40:18
Speaker
services by individuals in the best manner possible. So in order to do that, you have to have these classification and then the testing mechanism, but you also need to know, okay, so if I'm a police officer and I'm late for work all the time and I start questioning, I'm insubordinate,
00:40:45
Speaker
And on the other side, say you're a principal clerk and you do the same thing. Should the level of potential punishment be the same based on the position and the accountability of the position? There's like a great public trust in our law enforcement officers.
00:41:04
Speaker
So the standard is a little different than it would be for a clerk, basically. You know, what a clerk may do and what a police officer do, they may both be in subordination, but the officer's supposed to reflect a higher level of public. They're out there enforcing the law. They should be the example. You know, these people can take your freedom away.
00:41:32
Speaker
So there's a higher obligation. And you kind of learn these things when we have to make penalty decisions on matters that come before us. And it helps us understand those types of things as well, because the other part of what we do is like an adjudicatory function for discipline, for removals,
00:41:58
Speaker
for layoff actions if they're in good faith or not. There's discrimination claims that you can bring under our jurisdiction for a particular state policy that we administer to enforce equality in the law force and non-discrimination.
00:42:19
Speaker
So it's important to know all these things so it all kind of fits together nicely in a in a personnel quasi type of personnel system that is kind of the umbrella and once removed from the actual frontline HR because when we produce a test that results in an employment list really the HR function of hiring goes to
00:42:49
Speaker
the agency making the hire. And they have to do that in conformance with our law, of course. And there's different laws that govern, okay, you have to pick one of the top three on the list. Veterans preference is absolute. There's certain ways you can remove people from the list, but you gotta be able to make a case to do it. Our agency really provides these personnel tools to appointing authorities so they can do their jobs.
00:43:18
Speaker
Okay. So it's providing the tools and providing like an adjudication forum for disputes under the law.
Transgender Representation and Leadership
00:43:28
Speaker
That's fascinating. And so I want to pivot for a second to something that's a little bit more personal, but I know that the full expression of your identity happened just a few years ago during the pandemic. And now, as I mentioned earlier, you're the first openly transgender state cabinet member.
00:43:49
Speaker
So what has that experience been like from then to now? It's been like a real whirlwind for me, quite frankly. And at times it's overwhelming. For the last 22 years, before I was blessed with this opportunity, I wasn't really forward facing to the public.
00:44:15
Speaker
as far as just like any other bureaucrat. I had cases to do and I moved up in that. I ended up being the director of the division where I worked.
00:44:27
Speaker
you do legal research and writing pretty much all day. Now what's a little different is I'm out more talking to people about the good work of the Civil Service Commission and how we can further assist with whatever your employment needs are as they relate to the different programs that we are responsible for.
00:44:53
Speaker
So like, for example, it's tough to hire public safety positions now for various reasons. And if you're an employer,
00:45:05
Speaker
looking to hire police officers, say, for example. Traditionally, you got to use the list to make these offers. Well, it takes time to produce these lists. Then when you produce the list and there's different folks on there that may not be the best candidate, well, can you remove them from the list for real?
00:45:28
Speaker
And is there a good basis to do this? Or are they psychologically fit? So the process can take months, years sometimes, but you need to fill a position today now. And it's really become exaggerated since COVID because the employment market has become very tight. Just like the public sector, we are trying to fill positions at all levels
00:45:57
Speaker
of public service through our system and the tools that we are creating aren't really meshing up with what the needs of the appointing authority are. They're not in a position where they can wait that long to make offers of employment or even start the process because candidates now will move to another offer. They just can.
00:46:21
Speaker
So what a lot of what I'm doing now is trying to meet and talk with these different appointing authorities and in person to see what we can do within our statutory and constitutional restraints in order to try to improve this process because public services is going to suffer unless we can get the best talent that we can to fill our
00:46:50
Speaker
facilities are, are, are veterans homes are the folks at the DMV or motor vehicle commission. I'm sorry. My age is showing, um, you know, our, our, our hospitals that are on, you know, for the, um, uh, for like the developmentally disabled for the folks that works on the, on the roads.
00:47:15
Speaker
No, that makes a lot of sense. Well, you know, people will just not migrate to public service if it's like, well, you know, well, maybe you'll be reachable on a list or we don't know, you know. And so we're looking to try to.
00:47:32
Speaker
try to address and approve, but getting in front of people and talking to them in that kind of manner has been the biggest thing in my life. These overall policy kinds of decisions now, I used to always say in DARA, which is the division where I work, Division of Appeals and Regulatory Affairs, if I were queen for a day, I would do this.
00:47:54
Speaker
And it would just solve everything. Well, now I'm sort of like the end of the decision making in my little world, I guess. And it goes back to that tenacity. There's really a lot of different views and outputs to consider now. And the only way that I know how to get out there and get that information is by having the rubber hit the road and talk to people.
00:48:21
Speaker
It's funny, from my particular journey, I spent most of my career as a man in the Department of Personnel Civil Service Commission.
00:48:35
Speaker
And a huge constituency of the agency are our public safety partners, lots and lots of police and fire testing and disciplinary appeals and, you know, a very, very it's a big chunk of our quote unquote business. And our collective bargaining partners are very, very involved in their membership. And
00:49:04
Speaker
The first thing that I had to do publicly was to address the FMBA members at one of their conventions in Atlantic City. Wow. Now these are all mostly men. Right. And kind of like alpha men, you know, it's just like, I mean, you're really take charge kind of control person, you're going to be running into a
00:49:32
Speaker
a fire to save somebody's life, you know? So was that a challenging moment for you? That was a real challenging moment for me, actually, because I don't know how they're going to take me. Right. I'm six foot one without my kitten heels on. Right. Okay. So I was really nervous. So I was it, you know, I had to go up and speak at the Diaz. I didn't go to the Diaz and walk down.
00:50:01
Speaker
from the stage and addressed the members face to face from the floor on and talk to them that way. Wow, that's powerful. And I wanted to represent that it doesn't really matter who I feel I am as a gender or how I present myself. I have something to offer you with civil service for this particular parts of your lives. Let's have a discussion.
00:50:30
Speaker
let's talk about what we need to talk about to better serve your needs because you're going to be the guys possibly running into my house and saving my children if my house is on fire. So what can I do in a support capacity to make you not have to worry about your civil service related junk? And I had guys
00:50:56
Speaker
speaking to me for like an hour, asking me questions and peppering me questions and stuff. But I was really scared. But I thought if I wanted to do this because, and I always joke and say, I wanted to do that because I wanted to show that transgender people don't bite. But it was very rewarding. And, you know, most folks are okay with it so far, at least they've been to me.
00:51:24
Speaker
That's great. I'm so glad to hear that. I wasn't really quite sure because when I first started presenting full time, I did it in small circles, right?
00:51:41
Speaker
Um, during COVID, for example, I was one of the few people that came into the office every day because of the level of my position. They needed senior staff there. Sure. Well, our senior staff is a limited number of people. You know what I mean? So I got comfortable with them. And then we started bringing staff back on a, on a couple of days a week when things started to lighten up and more people got acquainted and people talk, you know,
00:52:11
Speaker
Sure. But they treated me wonderfully. I'm so happy to hear that. And they see me as a colleague, not as a, well, you decided to wear a dress to work one day, so they make you chairperson. And that's always been my biggest concern. When I was appointed, my nomination was, I think Governor Murphy was so kind to nominate me.
00:52:41
Speaker
I learned very quickly you don't read comments in social media on a politician's website because some of the things were horrible. Right. And whatever I did for the last 22 years, if it was good, bad or indifferent, at least according to the social commentators, I got this job because I was transgender and they needed a transgender person.
00:53:06
Speaker
And I feel like I really have to work hard to demonstrate that transgender people or anybody really doesn't matter if you're transgender or whatever, your religious beliefs are or your race or gender or whatever. It's really the content of your character and what you do, it just doesn't disable me. And I can still do stuff.
00:53:34
Speaker
No, it enriches your experience and you bring wonderful things to the table. So I know that the governor recognized that and I'm so happy about that. And I'm so, so fortunate. I never really thought, like I thought I would just work in the appeal section until I retired, basically. I never really
00:54:01
Speaker
like pursued this or anything. It's just my predecessor wanted to retire and it kind of evolved from that. And I'm just so fortunate. I feel like one of the nice things about working in a division that
00:54:27
Speaker
does the adjudication work for all of the other divisions and the local appointing authorities that have civil service issues is you get a lot of exposure to how the other divisions do things, the processes of the agency, because you have to defend them. You have to get your facts straight first, right? So you end up learning so much about the multifaceted roles of other people
00:54:54
Speaker
and other operations that are related to civil service. So I think that gives me at least an opportunity to have some of that knowledge to be able to know where we may be able to push the envelope a little bit to make improvements where things are going fine. I think it gives, at least gives me an insight that way. And I hope to,
00:55:23
Speaker
to use it in such a way as to benefit our public servants and ultimately the public. Absolutely. Well, we're so thrilled that you're leading the commission and we're so happy that you are a proud graduate of Rutgers Law School. I am too. You know, I never thought I'd even when I remember applying as an under
00:55:47
Speaker
graduate for Rutgers. And I was like, they're never going to accept me. I'm not small enough. Well, you've proved them wrong. And it was just like, oh, my God, this is like so wonderful. You know, it was really a dream come true. That's great for me. And then maybe it sounds trite now, but it was it's it's the God's honest truth. I love that. It really is. You know, it's just it's just not like the school next door or whatever for me.
00:56:14
Speaker
No, it's a special place. I agree. It really is. Well, I can't thank you enough for joining us, Chairperson Myers. This was a fantastic conversation. And I really appreciate you sharing your time with us today. Oh, thank you. Thank you all for having me. I really appreciate it. And if there's ever anything I can do to help or public service is always looking for
00:56:42
Speaker
law school graduates. We have many positions that need to be filled. Great. We will send some folks your way. Or if you give us the opportunity to go down there and have a talk with some of our folks that do the recruiting to talk to the students about any public service career. Just in my department,
00:57:10
Speaker
We need several trainee attorneys and we're very small. It's all over the place. And the agencies look towards us to try to find these resources. So I would certainly welcome if there was any type of
00:57:31
Speaker
forum that you could give our agency to try to help your students help the public. I would really appreciate it. We would love to have you to campus and we'll start that conversation. Oh, thank you again so much for, I'm so honored. Thank you. Thank you so much. Take care. Take care.
00:57:52
Speaker
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